


Perfect

by acidpop25



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, Eating Disorders, M/M, Triggers, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidpop25/pseuds/acidpop25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perfection is what Arthur does, perfect research and perfect suits and perfect gunshots and perfect bones. A slim silhouette, dagger-deadly and gleaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Major triggers for eating disorders.

He'd let them down. In the most dangerous, critical job of their _lives_ , Arthur had missed something. He is scarcely to his hotel room before he's flipping open his files on Fisher, reading them all over again for the hidden words, the overlooked hint, _anything_. He is Cobb's point man, and knowing everything about the job is Arthur's job. Arthur should have known. The team should have known, before they put their lives on the line like that.

It is a blessed relief to collapse on his hotel bed and just _breathe_. Arthur stays like that for a good twenty minutes, just lying there and trying to switch off the never-ending stream of thoughts and self-recriminations. It doesn't really work, but the space and time to himself is calming, somewhat. Eventually he drags himself to the shower– he has, after all, been on an airplane for almost fifteen hours– and lets the hot water sluice over his skin and flush his body pink. Arthur feels sluggish and uncomfortable, and long fingers trace the lines of his hips as he stands in front of the mirror, toweling his hair dry. Too much time in France; at the rate he's going, he'll need new suits. Arthur frowns at the thought and pads back into his room to get dressed in a fresh suit. He is just buttoning his vest when there's a knock on the door– Ariadne is there, smiling.

"We're gonna go get dinner," she tells him, "all of us."

"I assume you're not taking no for an answer."

"Pretty much."

Arthur's lips twitch. "I'll met you in the lobby in five minutes," he promises her. Ariadne is impossible to say no to.

Ariadne is impossible to say no to, and so Arthur finds himself at an obscenely high-end restaurant sitting sandwiched between Eames and Saito, reading over a menu that has no prices. Of course it has no prices; Saito is footing the bill. Arthur orders a salad, utterly uninterested in lobster or filet mignon or whatever other heavy entrees the others are having.

"Just salad?" Ariadne asks, frowning at him across the table, and Arthur shrugs.

"I've been thinking of going vegetarian," he answers, even though he hadn't, but the idea sounds like a good one as soon as he says it. No meat, no fats or heavy gravies. He should have thought of it sooner, really.

"You'll be even more of a twig," Eames remarks idly, only half paying attention. Arthur watches Eames lick drawn butter from his lobster off his lips and suppresses a gag. Nothing like that will ever find its way on to Arthur's plate, he assures himself, calming, and starts cutting up the unmanageably large lettuce leaves into small bites that he can eat without distending his jaw like a particularly boorish cobra. There are too many bites, and most are forgotten in favor of a conversation with Saito.

The subject of the salad falls by the wayside– just like the food itself.

* * *

"We're not on business anymore," Eames remarks to Arthur as the group is walking back to the hotel, "you don't need to be professional now."

Arthur slants a glance at him. "You have all the subtlety of a grenade launcher, Mr. Eames."

Eames grins and slings an arm around Arthur's shoulders. "You saying no?" He smells of cologne and good scotch, and his arm is warm and strong against Arthur.

"I'm saying you'll have to do better than that," Arthur answers, and his lips curve into a soft smile, cheeks dimpling. Eames may be irritating sometimes, but he's also one of the only people who's a challenge to verbally spar with, and in truth he appreciates that far more than he generally lets on.

"I fought off an entire army while skiing down a mountain."

Arthur arches a brow. "I rigged a kick in zero gravity."

"I may have to retract what I said about imagination," Eames says, and his hand slides to the small of Arthur's back. "Does that ingenuity extend to the bedroom?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Arthur answers archly, and Eames leans closer.

"As a matter of fact," he murmurs, breath hot against Arthur's ear, "I really, really would."

It has been hanging in their air between them ever since Eames had stepped into the warehouse, but now the job is done. The job is done, and Eames has Arthur pressed with his back against the door and buttons ripping away under impatient fingers– at least until Arthur drags him toward the bed and tears Eames' shirt the rest of the way open with a low sound in the back of his throat. Arthur takes all the control.

"I'm impressed," Eames breathes when it is over, their limbs tangled and the sheets a mess, "you're a wildcat in the sack, darling." His hand runs along Arthur's side and Arthur shifts uneasily, conscious of that layer of flesh between Eames' fingers and the clean, pure lines of bone. He should try harder.

"Thanks," Arthur says, and for appearances' sake adds, "You were okay."

Eames hits him with the pillow.

* * *

It only takes a week for Arthur to start getting restless without a job to do. As pleasurable as spending far too much time in bed with Eames has been, Arthur gets twitchy and anxious without a task at hand, and soon enough he's quietly hunting around for work– and, well, if the job he accepts happens to be one that will require a forger, that doesn't _necessarily_ have anything to do with the tattooed Brit currently lounging in his bed. Not necessarily.

"It's not like we don't have plenty of money left from the Fischer job," Eames points out, watching Arthur pack his bags.

"Don't you get bored without work?"

"I'm better at entertaining myself without it," he answers lazily. Arthur glances back at him.

"Pack for Madrid, Mr. Eames, and we'll only get one hotel room."

Arthur has never seen Eames get out of bed quite so fast.

The flight is a long one, and the airline feeds them questionable food that Arthur refuses to touch, buzzing with nerves about the new job. Eames chalks up Arthur ignoring his meal to the point man's typical pickiness and stays awake watching some insipid romantic comedy while Arthur pours over pages of notes on his laptop. He lets Eames rest his head on a narrow, bony shoulder, though, so Eames doesn't interrupt his work. He just watches the guy get the girl and thinks _what if_.

* * *

"No wonder you're so skinny," Eames says one day over breakfast, "don't you ever _eat_? Here." And before Arthur can protest, Eames is heaping eggs on to Arthur's plate, and Arthur can taste bile in his throat.

"Enough, enough," he protests, knocking Eames' fork away. "I'm not a child, I can handle my own breakfast."

Eames makes a dubious noise in his throat and he's _watching_ , Arthur hates it when people watch him eat. Eames stares him down until Arthur relents and begins cutting the eggs into tiny pieces, slick and revolting in his mouth, and Eames' soft smile isn't worth this, isn't worth this oily awful taste on his tongue and churning in his stomach. Arthur eats, and is disgusted, and it's like he can already _feel_ the fat layering under his skin. He shudders.

As soon as the meal is over, Arthur tells Eames to go on ahead under the pretext of making a phone call, then slips into the lobby bathroom and forces everything up again. He barely even needs his fingers, he feels so utterly revolted with himself. _Get it out, get it out_ , he thinks desperately, and spits into the toilet.

He is in control.

This job, Arthur thinks as he climbs the staircase to his floor– not the elevator, he is taking no chances, is burning away any of that fat that may have slipped into him before he chased it out– is going to go perfectly. This job is all Arthur's, no Cobb to lean on, and it's going to go perfectly. It has to. Perfection is what Arthur does, perfect research and perfect suits and perfect gunshots and perfect bones. A slim silhouette, dagger-deadly and gleaming.

Eames is waiting, sitting on the bed in a patterned purple shirt and a hideous tweed jacket. Eames is clever, but he is broad and heavy and without taste. Eames can be anyone in dreams, _anyone_ , but there is always something off. His blonde girl's breasts are too large, too heavy, weighing her (him) down. Her eyes are spaced just a little too wide. Arthur doesn't understand why Eames doesn't create something flawless; Arthur knows that Eames could.

After all, Arthur can. Arthur's ribs are a ladder, his wrists like the bones of a bird when Eames slides the IV in. The veins are easy to find; Arthur wonders, right before he falls asleep, how much his blood weighs. He ought to know that.

The garden smells of cut grass and the heavy, sticky scent of flowers, and Arthur glances down at himself. He is so beautifully thin in dreams, like a wire. So thin and strong and unbreakable, tensile strength and perfect lines. Arthur and Eames part ways at the start of the hedge maze (Eames' redhead has too round a rear end), and Arthur's steps carry him down the path Ariadne had taught him before. The path leads to a fountain, and on it Arthur can make out the line of the compartment in the base– for wiring, supposedly, but he knows what he will find there.

The water is bitterly cold; Arthur shivers as it hits him, and his suit clings like another skin as he wades to the middle to coax open the lock. Cobb had liked combination locks, safecracking, but Arthur can pick a normal lock with uncanny efficiency, long fingers guiding bits of whatever wire comes to hand with practiced ease. There is a click, and the small door swings open.

Arthur can know anyone's secrets, but no one knows Arthur at all.

* * *

When Arthur faints in the streets of Rome, Eames has had enough. He's kept his peace, has let his fingers encounter bone, bone, bone without saying anything about it. Every now and then he'd force some food down Arthur, keep him going, and they wouldn't talk about it.

It's going too far.

"Eames?"

When he turns, Arthur has woken, looking up at him with those dark eyes. He is so painfully thin under the sheets; Eames feels as if Arthur might snap like a twig at the slightest pressure, and Arthur is always under pressure.

"It has to stop," he says without preamble, voice deadly serious. "This has to stop, Arthur."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Arthur says coldly, getting up. His posture is stiff, defensive, and Eames doesn't know if he wants to hit him or cry.

"You know everything," Eames retorts, "except, apparently, that you have a problem. You're _starving_ yourself, Arthur, you need–"

"I don't need anything."

"You need _help_ ," Eames says, and there's a hitch in his voice. "Please, darling. You're killing yourself."

Arthur's eyes are like ice, covering over the coil of pleasure he feels that Eames has noticed, has finally really noticed. Arthur is almost there.

"No," he says, heading for the door, "I'll be perfect."


End file.
